The study was conducted on the Eastern Andean Cordillera of Colombia, in remnant forests occurring in the high-plain where Bogotá lies, one of the largest cities in Latin America. The high-plain covers an area of ​​about 185,000 ha at an average altitude of 2600 meters above sea level (m a.s.l.). We selected six study sites, distributed in the Eastern and Western slopes of the mountain range that surrounds the high-plain, which exhibit different climatic and edaphic characteristics. Five of the sites were located in the suburban municipalities of Soacha (So), San Francisco (Sf), Guasca (Gu), Tabio (Ta), and the last one, Torca (To), located in a large forest fragment at the periphery of Bogotá. Sites were selected so that they encompassed both early- and late-successional or old-growth forest patches. 
Within each site, we established three 20 m x 20 m plots in early-successional forests (E) and three 20 m x 20 m plots in late-successional (L) for a total of 36 permanent plots. Here, we present climatic and soil variables for each plot and also the abundances of all tree, shrub, palm, and tree-fern individuals with DAH> 5 cm included in each plot. For simplicity we refer to these as “trees” (-t). Within each plot, we additionally established four subplots of 2 m x 2 m, where we tagged and measured all seedlings> 5 cm in height and DAH ≤ 1 cm; we also present the abundances of the seedlings (-s).

Vouchers were collected for each tree and seedling species or morphospecies and identified with the help of an expert botanist and using the resources of the herbarium of the Bogotá Botanical Garden (JBB). Vouchers specimens were stored at the herbarium of the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute (FMB). Overall, we recorded Vouchers that were not identified to species were assigned a standardized morphospecies and were all included in the analyzes.

Climatic variables for each plot were estimated using the National Climatic Source, which is based on 2046 weather stations in Colombia and produces monthly data at ~90 m spatial resolution (http://institucional.ideam.gov.co/jsp/1769). We selected seven variables that included mean annual values of diurnal range temperatures (mean of monthly (max temp - min temp), MDR, ºC), mean annual temperature (MAT, ºC), total annual precipitation (TAP, mm), relative humidity (RH, %), water vapor pressure (VH₂O, KPa), solar radiation (SR, kJm^-2day^-1), and wind speed (WS, ms-1).

Soil variables were measured from composite samples of five soil cores collected at the four corners and the center of each plot and at a depth of 10-30 cm (after removal of the top litter layer). Samples were analyzed for 14 variables: available cations (Ca, K, Mg, Na, meq ·100g^-1), cation exchange capacity (CEC), exchangeable acidity (Al, meq ·100g^-1), organic carbon (%), particle size distribution (clay, sand, silt: %), total nitrogen (N, %), pH, available phosphorus (P, mg·kg^-1) and bulk density (g·cm-3) at the Laboratorio de Aguas y Suelos of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá.